Korn Ferry had exactly one job when the Las Vegas Raiders paid it to vet head-coaching candidates, and it blew that job in writing. The Korn Ferry memo on Brian Flores, unsealed Tuesday in his discrimination lawsuit against the NFL and six teams, reads less like a scouting report and more like a confession. I cannot believe we are still doing this in 2026, but here we are, reading an outside firm’s professional opinion that a Black coach’s most notable trait was learning to be comfortable around rich people.
Start with the “strengths” section, because Korn Ferry wrote this part down believing it was a compliment. Flores, the memo says, is “polished and a good presenter despite growing up in Brownsville, Brooklyn (same as Mike Tyson).” He was able, the document goes on to say, “to build a strong friendship with a billionaire’s son which gave him opportunities to socialize and learn how to build relationships with white-collar and upper-class individuals.” A firm hired to evaluate coaching acumen decided the most relevant thing about a Super Bowl-pedigree defensive mind was that he learned to talk to rich white people despite his zip code.
Korn Ferry wrote this down as a compliment. It reads like a confession.
Then there’s the “weaknesses” section, where the memo warns that Flores “can fool you with his polish upwards.” Flores’ attorney Michael Willemin has pointed out what that line is actually doing: implying it’s somehow surprising, maybe suspicious, that a Black man is this articulate and this sharp. Strength and weakness, same trait, same guy. Pick a lane.
Somewhere in the same document, an unnamed team executive calls Flores “the worst hiring decision we’ve ever made.” No evidence attached, no context given, just dropped into a vetting file like it’s data. That’s not analysis. That’s bullshit wearing a lanyard.
Korn Ferry, to its credit as an institution that knows exactly what it wrote, spent real legal money trying to keep this memo sealed. The firm argued it was privileged work product and that it wasn’t even a party to Flores’ suit, so none of this was anyone’s business. A magistrate judge rejected both arguments. Korn Ferry didn’t appeal to the district judge. When the firm that wrote the memo won’t fight for it in front of a judge who actually outranks the one who just ruled against it, that tells you plenty about how confident Korn Ferry was in its own paperwork.
https://x.com/FOS/status/2110196140968730915
Flores’ other attorney, Douglas Wigdor, said the unsealed memo shows “discrimination continues to play a significant role in the hiring process for NFL Head Coaches, as evidenced by the fact that the candidate profile prepared for the Raiders leans heavily on racial stereotypes.” He’s being generous calling it a stereotype instead of a pattern, because this is not the first team Flores has sued. The NFL and six teams are named defendants in the case he filed back in 2022 — the Miami Dolphins, the Denver Broncos, the New York Giants, the Houston Texans, the Arizona Cardinals, and the Tennessee Titans — and now there’s an eighth institution implicated that isn’t even a team: the vendor every franchise in the league pays to make hiring look objective.
That’s the part that should piss everyone off, not just the particulars of one bad memo. Teams outsource candidate evaluation to firms like Korn Ferry specifically so the process looks clean, so nobody can point at one GM’s private bias and call the whole league racist. Instead, here’s the professional, neutral, outside firm, writing in black and white that a Black candidate’s defining asset was learning to be comfortable around white money. The Raiders’ coaching search vetting process was supposed to be the fix for exactly this problem. It’s the same disease with a consulting fee attached.
Maybe one memo from one search cycle isn’t proof the entire hiring apparatus is broken. Fair point, in the same way one run red light isn’t proof a driver is reckless, except Flores has been making this exact argument in court for four years, and the institutions keep handing him documents instead of a defense. This is racial bias baked into NFL hiring, showing up in writing because the people doing the writing didn’t think anyone outside the building would ever read it.
Flores is the Minnesota Vikings’ defensive coordinator now, which is its own kind of answer. Flores’ defense in Minnesota has been one of the nastiest units in the league, built on the blitz-heavy scheme he’s built in Minnesota that makes opposing quarterbacks miserable on third down. The guy Korn Ferry flagged as surprisingly polished for his zip code is still out here getting paid to out-scheme people who, unlike Korn Ferry’s lawyers, actually had to earn it.
Korn Ferry wanted this memo gone. A judge said no. Go read it yourself and try to find the part where the bias is subtle.
